“ Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
-Matthew 6:25-27
Update: We are in Peru now. We have been here for little over a week and it’s a beautiful place. The people are nice, the scenery is beautiful, and the Lord is just so evident.
So the past couple days some of my teammates and I have watched a number of movies. A couple of us have come down with a little stomach bug and its kept us in the bed (we are all getting better now). So needless to say I haven’t been too productive. Its crazy how the Lord works through even my unproductiveness. It was hard for me to sleep last night because my mind was racing. There were two movies we had watched earlier that I couldn’t stop thinking about. The movies were The Last Samurai and Days of Thunder. Two movies I have seen countless times but took new meaning in my life last night.
Now, I can’t tell you everything about the movies, that would take forever, but I’ll tell you what I noticed. Lets start with The Last Samurai. At one point in the movie Tom Cruise is captured by the Samurai and after months of being with them he had this to say, “They are an intriguing people. From the moment they wake they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline”.
What powerful imagery! From the moment they open their eyes, they devote themselves to being the best…to the perfection…of whatever they do. How attractive is that? This kind of dedication and pursuit is so attractive that people can’t help but be attracted to it. There is a beauty and simplification to it that makes you wonder why you would ever want to operate any other way. Now hold on to this imagery and I’ll come back to it.
Watching Days of Thunder there is a part when Nicole Kidman yells at Tom Cruise after putting both their lives in jeopardy. She goes on to exclaim, “Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next: not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with 40 other infantile egomaniacs”.
Wow, what a sobering reality. We have absolutely no control over our lives. We constantly have this view that we have so much control. We feel as though we can command the sun to rise and fall. However, in actuality, we can’t even control when we go to the bathroom.
Where does this put us? We are in a world that demands us to have control of our lives. The funny thing that control does is cultivate the spirit of fear. When we start to “think” we are in control we ask ourselves, what do I have to do to stay in control? We are moving out of fear, not of love. We are afraid that we will somehow lose control as if we have control in the first place.
So, what do we do now? Do we give up? Do we throw in the towel? Do we sit on the couch, eat chips, watch football, and say we don’t have control of our lives so we aren’t going to do anything? NO! That’s called being lazy. Some even say, but God said not to worry about our lives, or to worry about what to drink or eat, or the clothes we wear. He said He feeds the birds in the air and we are much more valuable so we don’t have to do anything. Do not the birds of the air even have to go find food? If you haven’t read the parable of the Talents please do (Matthew 25:7). But I digress back to the topic.
We don’t have control over our lives. We can’t add a single hour by worrying. This is why we need to devote everything we have to what we do, to our families, friendships, our jobs (I’m not talking about putting in 80 hrs a week. I’m simply saying when we are there, we are truly there and working hard), and most importantly our relationship with God. Do you think the Samurai realized they weren’t in control? Yes, and they welcomed it. They made sure they devoted themselves to perfection in whatever they did because they wanted to be as best prepared for whatever was to come. This should be how we operate.
“Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath”.
-Psalm 39:4-5
This is the beauty of it all. We have to come to a place of release. We have to release this control in our lives. When we want to control something we start moving out of a place of fear and not of love. This is what makes God’s love so amazing. He DOES NOT control us even though He can. He gives us the choice to follow Him.
We need to get to the realization Tom Cruise got to in Days of Thunder. We need to truly see what the Holy Spirit said through David in Psalm 39:4-5. Realize we aren’t in control, that our days are numbered, embrace it, and move in that…not in fear but in love. The Samurai didn’t do all these things for fear of the unknown, they did it because they wanted to always be prepared. Don’t freak out that we don’t have control over our bodies, over our lives, over how long we will live. It is a freeing feeling to know that all you have is the day at hand so do the best with what you got.
Live in the joy and peace that is given in the promise of Hebrews 13:5! Know that the Lord will never leave or forsake you. Believe that He is in complete control and in that He will never leave or forsake you. Believe that HE WILL NEVER LEAVE OR FORSAKE YOU! Its extremely comforting when you think about it.
God wants you to move. He wants you to work, to be successful, to love your family, to provide for your family, to be educated, to not have to live pay check to pay check. Its good to have goals in life. Just don’t get so caught up in the ideas of tomorrow when all you have is the reality of today. Every day you wake be thankful. Make a push for perfection in all you do…especially your relationship with God and then with others. Don’t get caught up in the worries of tomorrow because all we have is today. Work hard, play hard, and love even more!
Take a deep breath….relax…..and know that you are beautifully and wonderfully created by the one true God of this world and that He will NEVER leave nor forsake you! 🙂
